The foreign minister of North Korea Ri Yong Ho on Monday in New York said that President Donald Trump has “declared war” on his country and that Kim Jong Un’s regime would consider shooting down American bombers even when they are not yet inside the airspace border of our country.

“Last weekend, Trump claimed that our leadership wouldn’t be around much longer and he declared a war on our country,” Ri Yong Ho said. The foreign minister appeared to be referring to a tweet that Trump sent Sunday, which referred to “Rocket Man” — the US president’s nickname for Kim.

On the other hand, the White House on Monday rejected the notion that the U.S. had declared war and ripped Pyongyang’s talk of shooting down American planes.

“We have not declared war on N. Korean, and frankly the suggestion of that is absurd,” White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said at a press briefing on Monday.

She added that “it’s never appropriate for a country to shoot down another country’s aircraft when the planes are over international waters.”

Since assuming office, Trump has also joined in with bold language of his own, warning North Korea that he could visit fire and fury on the authoritarian regime if it threatened the U.S.

Many analysts agree that while the North’s apocalyptic statements may sound crazy, the country is actually building its missile and nuclear program according to a rational set of goals. Key among its aims is self-preservation. It saw that leaders in Iraq and Libya fell to Western-backed regime change after they gave up their nuclear programs, and Kim has vowed not to suffer a similar fate.

Pyongyang conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test earlier this month and has threatened to test a hydrogen bomb over the Pacific.